The National Museum has opened an exhibition highlighting the personality
cult of the first Czechoslovak communist president, Klement Gottwald. The
exhibition, named Laboratory of Power, is located in Prague´s Vítkov
Memorial which the communist regime turned into a mausoleum for Gottwald
after his death in 1953. One of the exhibition’s organizers Marek Junek
took me through the underground rooms built for the army of people who took
care of the embalmed body for nine long years. He started out by explaining
how the memorial underwent a significant transformation after the
communists took power:

“The Vitkov Memorial was built in the years of the First Republic as a
memorial to Czechoslovak legionaries who fought in WWI and as a symbol of
the First Czechoslovak Republic. After the communists took over in 1948
they did not know what to do with this building. About three years later
they decided to change the concept of this building and they started to
call it the Proletarian Pantheon and important members of the communist
party were buried here. When Klement Gottwald died in 1953 the communists
took inspiration from Moscow’s Lenin and Stalin mausoleums and decided to
build a mausoleum for Gottwald in Czechoslovakia. In the space of six
months they built the underground rooms and turned it into the Klement
Gottwald Mausoleum. And Gottwald lay here from 1953 to 1962.”

Can you briefly explain what it is that you are showing here?

“Yes, we are now standing in Velin – the control room from which
everything was operated. Everything that visitors can see here is
authentic. All the equipment, all the instruments are from the 1950s.”

“Well, in a mausoleum you need constant conditions regarding temperature
and humidity –all this equipment ensured the right conditions in the
entire building.”

I must say the atmosphere here is very, very oppressive. I would say even
morbid. But I suppose that is your intention, is it not?

“Yes, of course. We aimed to create an oppressive atmosphere because it
reflects the mood of this period, it reflects the times. There was no
escape from the 1950s and there is no escape from this part of the
exhibition. Visitors can see lights for example and they can escape, but
they see guns. So it is about this period, about how people felt at the
time.”

I should say that we are standing in a very small room. Grey concrete all
around us and lots of knobs and switches and clocks in this control room
and we are about to walk down an extremely grey, narrow, dark corridor that
has not been lit properly – what are we moving towards now?

“Now we are moving to the laboratory, to the place where doctors took
care of Gottwald’s embalmed body.”

It looks like an autopsy room – quite scary. There’s a glass case in
which we see a body – a model, obviously, covered by a white sheet.
Everything looks very clinical, the walls and floor are tiled white. There
is nothing else in the room. ..

“Yes, this is where doctors took care of the body. In the early 1950s it
was doctors from the Soviet Union, later from Czechoslovakia who maintained
the embalmed body, inspecting it on a daily basis. If you look up at the
ceiling you will see where there was a lift with the help of which the body
was elevated from the laboratory into the upper hall where it could be
viewed by the public.”

So how many years did it spend here?

“Nine years.”

And they were able to keep it in good condition throughout that time, were
they?

“Of course it was maintained, but we do not really know what condition
it was in because we do not have complete archive materials and the
memories of people who worked here differ ostensibly. Some tell us that
parts of Gottwald’s body disintegrated with time and his hands and
eventually entire arms had to be replaced with artificial members, but one
doctor who worked here claims that the body was in perfectly good
condition. So it is very hard to say what really happened. The last archive
materials we have are from the year 1960 and we do not know what happened
in the next two years.”

How many doctors took care of the body on a regular basis?

“It was about five doctors, but there were 100 people employed here. One
hundred people taking care of one dead body.”

How long were they intending to keep it here?

Marek Junek
“I think – forever. When they built this mausoleum president Antonin
Zapotocky said they wanted to preserve this body forever. But, of course,
it wasn’t possible, because in 1962 the personality cult ended and
Klement Gottwald was blamed for everything that had taken place in the hard
line 1950s so it was no longer possible to show his dead body here. So that
year his body was cremated and placed in a sarcophagus where it stayed
until the end of the communist period.”

So he is buried here –his ashes are here somewhere still?

“No, his ashes were only kept here until 1990 and after that they were
placed in a common grave at Prague’s Olsany cemetery –together with the
ashes of about 20 other communist leaders which were originally placed in
the mausoleum. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia is now
maintaining that common grave. ”

It must have been quite awful for these doctors to be brought here to look
after the body. They were sworn to secrecy, about everything that went on
here, presumably...

“Yes, that is true. Of course this place was a top secret in the 1950s
and the doctors had no choice but to obey orders and work here, because had
they refused they would have been persecuted.”

Where did you get the information about everything that went on here? Have
you spoken to any of the doctors who were here and who took care of the
body? Or are they long dead?

“We have several sources, of course. For a start we have some archive
materials from the National Archive here in Prague and of course we tried
to find people who worked here in this memorial during the 1950s. It is
very, very interesting that some of them spoke to us and some of them
refused. They said they were afraid to speak with us, which is very strange
because the mausoleum has been closed for more than 50 years. And they
really would not talk about it.

So in the end we only talked to three people who worked here, but they
were in very important positions. One of them was a doctor who took care of
Gottwald’s body, another was an engineer who was in charge of the
technical apsects – maintaining a set temperature, humidity and so on and
the third was the son of Jan Zazvorka – an architect who arranged
Gottwald’s body in the sarcophagus. We talked with these three people and
each one of them has different memories about what happened here –that is
very interesting.”

In what way?

“Well, one says that Gottwald’s body was completely fine, another says
it was in a state of complete disintegration and so on. So there are
contradictions in what they tell us.”

But how do they remember the times they worked here – were they all
forced to work here?

“Some of them yes, but of course some of them did it for the money
because it was a very well-paid job. But when they remember those days they
say it was a time of fear, that everything was controlled and it wasn’t
very pleasant work. So they were glad when the mausoleum was closed in 1962
and they were moved to a different position.”

Clearly though it marked some of them for life if some of them are still
afraid to speak today...